This invention relates generally to the production of steel blooms, slabs, castings, and the like (hereinafter referred to collectively as steel blocks) and more particularly to a steel block cooling apparatus for cooling to a specific temperature steel blocks at high temperature which have been formed by a blooming mill, a slabbing mill, or the like or by continuous casting and, at the same time, recovering the sensible heat of the high-temperature steel blocks in the form steam.
Steels produced in steel manufacturing plants have to be passed through several heating and cooling steps in their production processes. The methods of cooling in the cooling steps differ depending on the kind of steel material. For example, a steel block which has been heated and equalized in a soaking pit, even after being rolled in a slabbing mill and being cut by a shearing machine, is still at a temperature as high as approximately 1,000.degree. C and is therefore sent to a cooling yard and cooled to a temperature below approximately 100.degree. C before being subjected to subsequent processing.
The cooling procedures may be divided broadly into three kinds as general standards, namely, slow cooling in the case of alloy steels and high-carbon steels, air cooling in the case of medium-carbon steels, and water quenching in the case of low-carbon steels. Thus, the rate of cooling is varied for different kinds of steels.
This invention relates to a steel block cooling apparatus effective for cooling at rates corresponding principally to air cooling among the above mentioned three kinds of cooling.
The most common method at present of air cooling steel blocks at high temperature after a process such as slabbing is piling in a cooling yard. In the case of slabs, several slabs are ordinarily piled in order to utilize economically the air cooling yard space. However, this piling of several slabs causes a difference in the cooling rates of the upper and lower surfaces of each slab, and this difference gives rise to a corresponding strain and warping in each slab. While this warping is small in a steel slab of short length, the warping in a slab of long length is great and gives rise to problems in conveying of the slabs to the succeeding process steps and in these steps.